


So Closely Allied

by J_Baillier



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: AU—Alternate depiction of the Holmes siblings' childhood, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Angst, Death, Family, Friends to Lovers, Ghosts, Loneliness, Loss, M/M, Major character death does not involve Sherlock or John, Siblings, Tragedy, and those deaths have happened long before the story starts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-05
Updated: 2018-11-05
Packaged: 2019-08-19 09:16:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,701
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16531715
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_Baillier/pseuds/J_Baillier
Summary: She has always been a part of his life but now, she needs to leave.





	So Closely Allied

**Author's Note:**

> The Major Character Death warning pertains to family members, not John or Sherlock.
> 
> My ficcery largely focuses on novel-length stories and extending several longer series, both of which require holding onto lots of threads, addressing continuity issues and plot holes, and cooperating with other people. As much fun as all of that can be, there's also quite a lot of pressure involved; when you've got a bunch of engaged readers expecting what's next in a storyline you have established, you want to meet those expectations (and surpass them). That's why I sometimes miss writing something small, something just for myself, something that deviates from my usual style and scale—something for which I have sole ownership and don't feel the need to consult others about the contents. When I've felt like that in the past, I have given myself a challenge of telling a story in less than 8-10k of words, telling a story that carries risks and challenges. That is what I did last weekend; here are the results.
> 
> The next _Summit Fever_ chapter will be published tomorrow (6th Nov).

 

She has always been there, always a part of his life. A presence, hovering in the periphery. Blink and you'll miss her.

Sherlock never fails to know when she's around. She raises the hairs on the back of his neck, makes him feel like he's being watched. Sometimes, he sees her, and she can be anything from just a shadow, a transparent figure parting the dust floating in the air, to a fully realised human figure. He does not know the logic with which she chooses her visage. He doesn't know how she thinks, or if she thinks much at all.

If she was suddenly to completely remove herself from his life, he's not certain how he'd react. Perhaps it's a bit like getting used to a bad dog or a rotten house. She's connected to him in some way neither of them understand—or perhaps it is only his understanding that it limited. It's clear she won't leave even if he asks her to do so—he's tried that, it doesn't work. It's hard to reason with someone who doesn't talk and who is, well… whatever she is.

She frightens him on a regular basis. Part of it must be residual fear from childhood, though he does not recall much of the first years he had shared his life with her. He has often wondered if the haziness of his recollections is connected to her, or something separate.

The rest of his fear is a very human reaction to being awakened in the night by a strange sound and suddenly seeing her, hovering above the bed. He has tried to reason with her, asking if she might consider at least staying out of his bedroom at night, but maybe she's filling out some archaic obligation he doesn't know about. Maybe night time is the natural habitat of her kind. It seems logical.

He has rebelled against her presence. The only time she leaves him be is when he uses. He's not sure whether it's because it somehow creates a barrier between her world and his, or if she simply disapproves. He knows it's cheating, a chemical bliss designed to make his brain receptors sing and soar, but sometimes it's all he's got.

He went on a veritable binge before his exams at Cambridge because she wouldn't let him be. Whenever the effect of his latest dose waned she was right there again, emanating an alien sort of concern. Finally, he had shot up and flipped her off in the gent's of the chemistry building on Lensfield Road.

It was an overdose. When he woke up in the hospital, the mattress at the foot of the bed had dipped. She was sitting there: almost invisible against the white curtain surrounding his bed. She had seemed patient, sad, exasperated. Always watching.

He quit his studies. A degree in chemistry would have meant a career around other people. Other people are incompatible with her. They also seem to be incompatible with him. She's a convenient excuse not to even try.

He becomes a private detective because he likes solving other people's problems. They distract him from his own and offer intellectual exercise. He likes having the reputation of an eccentric.

On a good day, he just might accept that it's his lot in life to regularly awake with a jolt and a scream when her existence has pierced through his slumber. When the neighbours come to knock on his door, he says he has nightmares. It's a good word. Eventually, they start to ask questions so he has to move. Again. He learns to move before people get fed up with her antics: the noises. The strange smells. The draughts. Water seems to fascinate her, so she leaves taps open as though she were a child playing in the bathroom.

Compensation for water damage is expensive and his home insurance payments keep going up.

  
  
-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

It's a stroke of luck that the upstairs flat in an old building on Baker Street is brought to his attention. 221B Baker Street has only had one inhabitant for a long time, an older woman who has taken a somewhat maternal approach to him, and who sees utterly unfazed by anything strange that happens upstairs during the first weeks he lives there.

"I've seen things," she tells him. "My husband was a drug dealer, as you well know," she teases.

He does know, because he had helped ensure his execution when a related case had been brought to him. He never charged her a penny for his help and doesn't entirely understand why. The rent she charges him is dirt cheap, especially for Marylebone. He can't quite work out how to deal with her fussing over him; it feels voluntarily maternal in a way his foster parents never behaved. It also feels slightly pitying, but for some reason it doesn't bother him.

  
-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-  
  


  
He begins to make a name for himself. The papers get curious about the cases he solves after the police begin consulting him. He'd met a Detective Inspector of the Metropolitan Police during the last period when he'd been using a few years earlier, and he'd inadvertently helped the man solve a double homicide. His name had stuck in the man's head and when one of his own cases merged with a Met investigation, his talents were discovered.

Sometimes he doesn't solve the case entirely on his own. Sometimes, a paper shifts in a pile, a carpet is moved, or something else subtle happens and cracks everything wide open. Other people think he likes talking to himself when he's deducing, but it's her he's really addressing. _'Thank you_ ', he sometimes whispers to thin air, wondering what she gets out of helping him. Maybe she's curious, maybe they are similar in that way.

She never answers, of course. He doesn't ever know what she's thinking; maybe she just reacts to the world, and him. Maybe she's as confused as he is.

It's a sad thought.

  
-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

"If you don't mind me saying, you don't look so good. Trouble sleeping?" Mike Stamford, the doctor who oversees the medical school laboratories at St Bartholomew's Hospital gently pries.

Sherlock forces on a fake smile which he knows spreads a little too quickly and is a little too sharp. It's the best he can manage. "You know me. On a case, won't sleep."

"I thought you said you didn't have a case on."

Sherlock yawns, shrugs.

A beaker falls off a shelf on the opposite side of the room. She doesn't often follow him to work but when she does, she's invariably a nuisance. On more than one occasion being startled by her has ruined a delicate phase in an experiment. But, at least here she behaves much more courteously than at home. Last night she'd been impossible: restless, noisy. What the hell is it about the violin that whips her up into such a frenzy?

The violin had come to him as part of a case. A client didn't have anything else to make a payment with, so they'd given him a family heirloom. A Stradivarius it isn't, but an expensive old thing all the same. He'd meant to sell it but had refrained after it turned out that she could somehow play it. Some of the works she performs he isn't even familiar with. Maybe she has picked them up from the radio which he sometimes turns on to feel less solitary; he favours the classical channels.

"They say being regular about it makes it easier to fall asleep," Mike points out. He's the sort of man whose nose-sticking into other people's business happens under the guise of doctorly concern, so his victims can't really protest. "Maybe you should get that flatmate, you know, someone who'd help you stick to a routine."

"I must be a difficult man to find a flatmate for."

Sherlock does miss having someone sleeping in the vicinity. The only good thing about sharing small bedrooms with several other children was that it always repelled her. There was one foster family he had hated for several reasons, one of them being that he was told to sleep alone in a repurposed basement. There, her nocturnal antics had free reign. They gave him antipsychotics after that. Nobody ever believed why he got so scared at nights though the signs were all there: the noise, the other children sometimes spotting things she did. That summer taught Sherlock that the human mind is astonishing in its capability for self-deception. It taught him not to talk about her.

One of the older boys enjoyed tormenting him. He was small, scrawny, different. One day, she pushed that boy down the basement stairs after he'd grabbed a handful of Sherlock's hair and slammed his head against a wall.

The boy broke an arm. Sherlock's time in that foster home ended soon after.

Another family, another house. She was the only constant. Sometimes Sherlock thinks there might be something about her he recognises: a distant familiarity in her dark hair, her facial features. But, those features, and her eyes, are only visible when she lets him see her as a child. Mostly, she likes to be older, but that always comes out wrong. She appears less solid, and her face is a blank canvas, as though an impressionist artist had tried to paint someone they had never seen.

"I'm sure there's some other bachelor in London who'd put up with you," Mike says. "Lord knows I wasn't the tidiest lad before marriage. We all have our habits, and you could interview them beforehand, you know, find out everything there is to know about them. You're good at that, reading people."

He's not good at reading people. He's good at reading the clues spread all over them, but human nature eludes him. But, a flatmate _might_ work. It might make her appear less, to make the flat feel more inhabited by people and less inhabited by something completely different. Sometimes the sound of Mrs Hudson's television is the only thing that tethers him back to reality when the other female occupant of 221b is really having a go at driving him round the bend.

Dropping a bit more lactic acid into the beaker in front of him, Sherlock wonders if future flatmates really _should_ know everything about each other.

Cold fingers brush across his shoulders, and his curls shift a bit in a slight breeze that soon passes. Mike is leafing through some of his teaching papers and having coffee; his presence is a subtle hint for Sherlock to make himself scarce; there will be students arriving, soon.

Shouldn't she have a say in who gets to live in the flat? After all, there will be three of them there.

 _No_ , Sherlock suddenly decides. _She's the reason I need a flatmate in the first place_. _She isn't allowed an opinion_.

He can't be honest to a potential flatmate about why it is he wants to share accommodation. _I should probably state money as the reason_. His work pays handsomely, and he could easily afford to live in an even more opulent place, but he likes the idea that, unlike some newer high-rise, their building on Baker Street has a history.

No, he can't tell a prospective flatmate that he's afraid of the dark and the things that live there. Can't say that he needs someone in the flat because he's so, so tired of having to calm himself down in the middle of the night, tired of long twilights staring out of the window and hoping for a pedestrian to go by so that he wouldn't feel as though she's trying to trap him between two worlds, nobody else knowing or understanding what he's going through.

He's a grown man, fearful of waking up in his own bed.

He really does need a flatmate. Someone who might show him how to navigate his existence without constantly being overwhelmed.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

His name is John and he is so much more than Sherlock could ever have hoped for. In fact, he can't take his eyes off the man. Not only is he tolerable, he's also handsome–––

_I need to impress him. He needs to like me; maybe then he'll put up with her, too._

The first few days are a bit touch-and-go. There's a case, and Sherlock drags John-the-new-flatmate along so that he'd spend as little time as possible in the actual flat. Better expose John to her as little as possible. Outside the flat, she at least stays out of sight when she follows Sherlock around.

She does things, of course, but people don't tend to notice them as easily when they're out and about. There are other distracting things around, such as Sherlock making a racket about his deductions.

By the end of the case, John has shot a man for Sherlock. To save him. Which carries the assumption that John quite appreciates the idea of his continued existence.

This feels cataclysmic for many reasons. One of them is that if John would kill a person for him, maybe, just _maybe_ putting up with a ghost isn't that much to ask in comparison.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

It is most unfortunate that John has come to believe Sherlock has a girlfriend. Then again, it's a reasonable deduction from a man whose joys in life largely focus on the opposite sex. Admittedly, it's kind of difficult to explain away small, feminine footprints on the wet carpet in the bathroom, or the events of the morning when John had completely thrown him by telling him his _lady friend_ had been in the kitchen when John came down for breakfast.

It had only taken Sherlock a second to parse what and who he had meant, but that second had been long enough to make John stare at him as though he was suddenly the village idiot.

"You forgot she stayed over? Did she sleep on the couch?" John asked.

"…Yes?" Sherlock offers.

John's lip quirked up. "That's… quaint." He chuckled. "Sorry I spooked her away; she must have spotted me coming down the stairs and left."

John thinks _he_ spooked _her_ away?

 _If you only knew,_ Sherlock thinks.

"She'll be back," he tells John with utmost certainty.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-  
  


  
There's a hand in his hair, carding through his curls. It's a gentle touch, the repeating pattern of it calming. It feels like a memory; sometimes, he thinks he might remember his mother doing this––

He opens his eyes.

A face that still carries the roundness of a toddler is hovering inches from his own. She is a small girl, and she is smiling. A cold white light that is more the absence of darkness than the movement of photons marks the boundaries of her body.

Sherlock screams.

He screams because nothing else so well banishes the startled fear gripping his heart, nothing makes her go away quicker. Like always, the sound makes her evaporate like a puff of mist, and the hand disappears from his hair. Blackness fills the empty space she had occupied where she'd perched on the edge of the bed.

Sherlock scrambles into a sitting position, crawls backwards so hard his back collides with the headboard. He fumbles around for the lamp on his bedside cabinet and accidentally knocks it over to the floor, flinching violently at the noise when the glass cover shatters.

He can't bring himself to clean up the mess because he's shaking like a leaf and can't seem to draw a proper breath.

He yelps when the door suddenly bursts open, the hinges groaning. Sherlock's heart pounds against his ribs even after he recognises the man standing in the doorway is John, gun in hand. His posture is tightly wound, battle-ready. _Ready to protect, to defend_.

John turns on the ceiling light, surveys the bed and the window and the rest of the room. When he finds nothing out of the ordinary he relaxes, clicking the safety back on and putting the gun on the bedside cabinet where the lamp used to be.

"Hey," John says, "You okay?" He looks at the lamp on the floor. "So that's what I heard."

John is in his pyjamas, the ratty old bottoms riding low on his hips. Normally, Sherlock would be mesmerised by the sight but now, he can't bring himself to focus on anything at all.

Why won't he get used to this? She's always here; what is it about her that makes his blood curdle in his veins, even when he's doing nothing harmful? Is this something that characterises her kind, the effect they inadvertently have on humans?

John sits on the bed, right where she had just been. His low hum is a question Sherlock knows how to interpret: he wants confirmation that his petrified flatmate isn't about to drop dead from something sinister.

Sherlock's words have not returned to him yet. He shakes his head—to signal what, he doesn't know. He wants to be left alone but also wants to be held, neither of which he can ask from John right now. Possibly not ever.

John frowns, in that intense way of his that swiftly erases his default setting of scepticism towards whether he should be taking the world seriously or not. Soon, he graduates from simply frowning to properly worried, and Sherlock both welcomes and is embarrassed by such attention.

"Nightmare," he manages to tell John. He isn't even lying.

_Nightmare, noun. A frightening or unpleasant dream. A very unpleasant or frightening experience of prospect. Synonyms: ordeal, horror, torment, trial. A person or situation that is very difficult to deal with. Origin: 'maere' in old English for 'incubus', a female evil spirit thought to lie upon and suffocate sleepers. Cognate with Dutch term 'nachtmerrie' and the archaic German word 'Nachtmahr'._

John gives him one of his rehearsed physician's smiles designed to comfort. It isn't comforting, because it underlines how John really doesn't know what goes on in the flat. "Was it anything you can remember?"

Cold sweat is squeezing out from Sherlock's pores, and he can't stop shaking. The adrenaline is still making his fingertips tingle, and his head feels slow, sluggish, his thoughts scattered. "I don't put any stock in dreams," he replies, surprised at how dismissive—how like himself—he sounds.

_Reality is much more frightening._

John takes his pulse, then pointlessly places a palm on his forehead. "Are you sure it's not some sort of parasomnia? That would explain why you're not a fan of sleeping in general. Sleep paralysis, maybe? I didn't want to say anything, but this isn't the first time I've heard you wake up suddenly and loudly or the first time you've appeared a bit upset afterwards."

Once, John had found him in the sitting room at four in the morning, pacing the floor after a similar visitation. He'd claimed he was thinking about a case, but John hadn't seemed convinced.

"It's not sleep paralysis if I can knock over a lamp, is it?" Sherlock points out.

John sighs, leans closer to peer into his eyes, presumably checking his pupil size, then retreats. "I guess not." 

Sherlock slides back under the covers.

"Go back to bed," he suggests to John.

"Are you sure you don't want me to stay a moment? You're still as white as a sheet."

"Nothing I haven't dealt with before, I assure you."

"A med school mate's now a sleep specialist; I could do a referral if you like?"

"No, thank you. I'm quite certain it wouldn't be of any use." _I need an exorcist, not a doctor_. If he believed in any organised religion, he would have sought the services of one years ago.

Sherlock has spoken with various people claiming to be mediums of ghost experts but had never gotten as far as explaining his own problem before deducing that none of those people had actually come in contact with anything like her. They photographed bits of grit in lenses claiming that those images depicted spectral orbs, recorded the groans of old houses, and spewed conjecture based on self-suggestion and reading too many cheesy stories about haunted houses. _Useless idiots_.

No, none of them had ever met anything like her, and Sherlock is convinced they would have all run away screaming.

"Why do you have to be so stubborn when it's about your health?" John asks. "Have you ever had this looked at?"

"Everyone gets nightmares, sometimes." Sherlock refrains from mentioning John's PTSD. It causes episodes where John is the one to wake up confused, frightened and hyperventilating.

John stands up and recovers his gun. It's almost endearing that he's trying to protect Sherlock from _her_ with a firearm.

The thought suddenly makes Sherlock break into a hysterical chuckle. It wouldn't be of any use. Nothing is ever of any use against her.

John is eyeing him suspiciously. "I'll be in the sitting room if you need me."

"Why would I need you?" Sherlock asks. _What could you possibly do to help?_

John pads to the sitting room, and hearing him moving around finally brings some peace for Sherlock.

He thinks about words as he curls up under the duvet: _ordeal, horror, torment, trial._

He decides the word 'torment' fits his life best. Unlike 'ordeal' and 'trial', it has no implicated end.

   
  


-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

Everyone involved in the case knows that Irene Adler is a dominatrix.

Sherlock had once solved a case related to a missing family heirloom brought to him by Prince Charles' hunting pal, and word has gotten around of his discretion and skills. So, when certain kinds of photos of a certain level of royalty need to be acquired from _The Woman_ , he is the first to be contacted. Nobody wants the MI5 on this—in any organisation, there's always someone who'd be unscrupulous enough to sell such a juicy story to the tabloids.

Sherlock doesn't read the tabloids. They're drivel for lesser minds.

Irene intrigues him The games she plays with her sexuality are of lesser concern; what catches Sherlock's interest is that most people don't know is that she is also genuinely psychic—a term Sherlock dislikes because it's outdated and silly—which makes her so exceptionally good at what she does. She touches people and reads things from them that way. She also _sees_ things. Things others choose to ignore.

Now, she is draping her arms around Sherlock's shoulders in the sitting room. John isn't home yet. They both know they're being watched; Irene is touching him because she is an incorrigible tease and likes power games.

Even with ghosts.

"Is she the reason you've not made a move on that doctor of yours?" Irene asks, lips close to Sherlock's ear.

Sherlock folds open the next page in the newspaper. "There's no point in whispering. She can hear you perfectly well."

"I _know_. Right now, she can't decide which one she should be more jealous of, me or him."

As much as Sherlock doesn't like asking people—least of all Irene—for favours, he does inquire whether she knows how to get rid of someone like…like…

"You don't even know her name?" Irene is surprised. "They're usually family members. Why else would she have latched onto you so firmly?"

"Can't you ask her? She won't talk to me."

"They most often can't talk, period. But, there are other ways to communicate."

He puts the paper away. "Such as?"

"The Ouija board."

"I thought it was a toy, a children's game based on the ideomotor reflex."

"You are being haunted, and you never looked into these things?"

Sherlock had tried to research such issues, but foster parents kept taking away related library books if he brought them home, saying they could _make his issues worse_. At some point, he quit trying and began adapting. _Began taking her for a fact of life._

He mourns when Irene dies. It had been refreshing to meet someone who believes him, who won't think he's psychotic if he tells them the truth about his life.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

Irene's parting gift turns out to have been a conversation between her and John. The latter picks up on Sherlock's conflicted sadness about her passing, and one night he asks Sherlock if they'd been lovers.

"I tried telling you before that girlfriends are not my area," Sherlock replies, curling his thumbs into his palms under the table to distract himself from his building anxiety. This is difficult, trying to talk about these things. He doesn't know how, so he needs to trust John to pilot a course through. Or, if that fails, Sherlock will need to flee this discussion.

"Well, what was that, then, two months ago with––you never told me her name?" John asks.

Sherlock scrambles for the first female name to come to mind. "Mary," he offers.

A glass falls into the sink and shatters into a million pieces. John glances towards the kitchen, unfazed. He has developed lots of theories about why weird things happen in the flat: elusive girlfriend, crooked floors, draughty insulation, old pipes.

_Self-deception._

A pile of books tips over on a shelf.

"With Mary," John concludes. A cold draught hits them, shifting one of Sherlock's fringe curls, which he quickly tucks behind his ear.

 _You're not a 'Mary', then. Got it._ He doesn't know if she's telepathic. Likely not. If she were, then she'd already be gone from his life—she would have understood how much he doesn't want her sharing it.

"Was it an experiment?" John asks next.

_No, John, just the bane of my existence!_

"Yes." What else could he say? "An unsuccessful one," he adds pointedly, directing his words at the empty air in the room. "One that needed to end a long time ago."

"So, you're done with girlfriends, then."

"Good God, John, why are we talking about this? No, there's no girlfriend and there never will be, because they are not my area, and it's not as though any man would want me, either!" he snaps, flings himself to his feet and prepares to storm into his bedroom. _Not with the baggage I come with._

John's eyes have gone wide. "Sherlock––"

" _No one_!" Sherlock snaps back and executes his plan.

But, John is John and soon there are two stumpy shadows of feet visible behind the door.

"You're wrong," John tells him. "You're wrong, and if you just said what I think you said then I do know there is someone who'd want to share your life. Someone who… um… already does."

   
  


-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

John wants him.

John Watson _wants_ him.

Him.

It takes some time for the truth to sink even, even after John Watson's tongue has been in his mouth and John Watson's hands are opening his trousers.

Sherlock is wanted.

He wants. God, he _wants–––_

But they're not alone, not even during something this intimate, and suddenly it's too much. He's done with this, he's had it. _Finally_ , he gets what he wants, gets what he has realised he wants more than anything in the world, and he can't have it because wherever he goes, whatever he does, he can't get a moment of peace from someone spying on him, staring at him, examining him as though he's an insect trapped inside a petri dish––

He scrambles off the bed, his hair a mess, only one sock dangling from his toes. His trousers sliding to his knees.

"NO!" he yells, and tears are already streaming down his face. "You are NOT taking this from me! Not this! What the _hell do you even want from me?!_ "

He sits on the floor. It's icy cold, as is the air, and he feels fingers on his shoulders, icy fingers as though someone is awkwardly trying to comfort him. He swats them away, aware that it must look like he's trying to fight empty air.

For the first time in his adult life, Sherlock cries in the presence of another real person, and it takes a while before he can stop.

John is kneeling next to him, quietly saying his name. She's standing right beside John; Sherlock can see her outline against the dark wallpaper.

John is too concerned, too focused on him to notice her.

"Who are you?" Sherlock asks, voice hoarse, "What did I ever do to you to deserve this?"

He realises only afterwards that John must think he's talking about him.

John crawls closer where he's sat down on the floor and wraps his arms around Sherlock's shivering form. He's wonderfully warm.

And he hasn't left. Not _yet_.

"You deserve everything you want. It's okay. Too much too soon, hmm?" John murmurs into his ears.

"Too little, too late," Sherlock replies. "It's not you that's the problem. Not us. Not–––" he flaps his hand feebly between them; "––not this. I want this. I want us. But I don't know if she'll let me have it. She just always has to be here, and I've had it with her."

John rises, extends his hand, pulls Sherlock to his feet and leads them to sit on the edge of the bed.

Sherlock glances quickly at the shadows in the corner beside his wardrobe, and the darkness shifts there, looking like ripples on the surface of the sea at night.

"I'm tired," he says. "I'm tired of sharing everything with her. My life's not mine, and I don't know how to reclaim it."

"I don't understand," John says and of course he doesn't—how could he? Sherlock has never explained about her. He has been naive to assume he would never have to. Assumed that John would be a conductor of light in the darkness where she hides, that John could be her reckoning, somehow.

"' _How do you feel about the violin'_ ," Sherlock quotes himself. " _'There might be strange noises at all hours; I rarely sleep_.'" This is what he'd warned John about when he'd come by to see the flat for the first time.

Sherlock sighs. "It's _her_ , John, it's always been her." He shifts so that he can grip John's wrists. He does it because John needs to understand and because Sherlock has carried this for years and he doesn't have the energy to do it alone anymore. If John leaves him after this conversation, then he would have left, anyway. _There's nothing to lose_.

"Well, yeah, that's all true," John says, looks down at their joined hands but doesn't struggle against Sherlock's tight grip. He lets out an awkward laugh. "You told me all that, and it's not been a deal breaker before, and it won't be one now that we're together."

"I don't play the violin, I never have. I wanted to, but foster parents always said that instruments and music lessons were too expensive. I'd sleep more if I could, but it's hard when she won't let me."

He doesn't even want to think about how much time she spends in his bedroom, just shifting around, _watching him sleep_. It doesn't help to relocate to the sofa in the sitting room. She's everywhere. She follows him from flat to flat, from foster home to foster home, to hotels and doss houses and drug dens.

"Sherlock, if there's some ex bothering you, stalking you––" John has conveniently ignored his grand reveal about the violin just now.

"I DON'T PLAY THE VIOLIN!" Sherlock shouts, letting go of John's hands. He springs to his feet, eyes blazing, narrowed, homed into the darkness. "Show yourself! At least have the decency to do that if you were going to watch us make love! _SHOW YOURSELF_!"

John stands up, mouth already open to say something, but his words freeze in his mouth when she complies.

For the first time, she complies what Sherlock has asked her to do. The darkness shifts again, and an outline appears. It's her adult form, the faceless one, still undeniably female. White clothes like a blank canvas; long, dark, blackish brown hair just like Sherlock's, but straighter.

There's a thud when John hits the floor, having fainted.

"Now look what you've done," Sherlock mutters and descends upon him to revive his prospective boyfriend— _still prospective_ , Sherlock decides, because now John knows what package deal he'd been about to make.

Lifting John's feet up and fanning the air over his face with his palm, Sherlock glares at his infinite and silent companion and senses embarrassment. It crackles in the air between them. He can't recall even sensing any emotions from her as clearly as this.

He knows she's not malevolent, but then again it might not even be useful to try to box her in with such terms of malevolent or benevolent, good or bad. She just is, just like people.

Has she been… people, once?

A cold wind shifts his curls, and then she is gone from the room.

Soon, a Chopin Nocturne played on the violin begins sounding from the sitting room. Sherlock can't decide if it's a lullaby or a dirge.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

"Kind of makes sense now, yeah," John admits over tea two hours later. "All the noises and finding my gun in various weird places. I just thought it was all you, and your, um, girlfriend."

Sherlock doesn't quite know how he feels now that he has told John everything. The army doctor— _his_ army doctor, hopefully—is showing considerable strength of character in facing the notion that he has been co-habiting an affordable flat with a spectre.

Sherlock has curled his fingers around his warm mug, and he's aware that he's openly staring at John because he just can't wrap his head around the fact that he has someone like that in his life, someone who likes him and will believe him.

They're alone in the kitchen; she seems to have made herself scarce after being shouted at. She'll be back, Sherlock is certain of it. If shouting could banish her permanently, it would have happened earlier. 

"And you don't know anything about her? I thought that ghosts haunted places, not people," John points out, plucking a grape from a plate he'd left on the table a day earlier. Sherlock had been considering turning the grapes into a mould experiment.

"Some literature says both kinds of hauntings are possible. After all, there's the phenomenon of poltergeism which, in some ways, combines the two."

"Those are the ones that throw pots and pans around, aren't they?" John asks.

"Poltergeists don't tend to manifest visually so I wouldn't class her as such. Throughout history, regular ghosts have been reported to affect their surroundings physically."

"She's the one who keeps moving my gun?"

"Maybe she hasn't seen one before. Maybe she knows it's important to you. I've not been able to discern her purpose in general. She doesn't seem to try to harm me or anyone else actively. What I get from here is more… I get the sense that she experiments, that she's curious, that she doesn't quite know how the world works."

"What does she look like? I assume you can see her better than me." John glances around. "If she here, now?" he whispers.

"No, she isn't. I'd feel her even when I can't see her. She doesn't show herself often, not even to me; maybe it takes up a lot of energy to do so. I know what her face looks like as a child, but as familiar as some things about her seem, I don't recognise her. When she manifests as anything beyond, say, four years old, the facial features are like blotched watercolour or completely blank."

"Anyone in your family this could be?"

"It's not my mother, I know that much. I don't really know about any other dead female relatives." He detests the word _orphan_ , annoyed at the imagery of Dickensian pathetique it evokes, but it's accurate.

"So, your mother is dead? Your biological one, I mean?"

"My parents died in an accident which I don't really remember. I do know what my mother looked like; I have some photos of her. I was very young when they passed away. I know I had a brother, but for reasons unknown, we weren't placed in foster care together. I can't even really imagine what he'd look like as an adult because I don't remember him that well as a child. I think he went to a boarding school, that there was a significant age difference."

"Could she be related to a case?"

"No. John, she's been with me all my life. As long as I can remember _anything_ , she's been there. Nobody ever believed me. I tried to tell my foster parents, but they just took me to see psychiatrists and therapists who told me that it's normal to have imaginary friends and that was the end of the conversation. As I grew up, my insistence that she was real began to worry them more and more, and eventually, nobody wanted to hear about her. They put me on medications, and they––" he trails out because he doesn't want to remember.

He doesn't want to remember sitting on his bed in that bleak room in that bleak clinic being promised that he'd stop seeing her when the new medications kicked in. They never worked, just made his drowsy, made him not care about anything. Whenever the doctors came to see him in his room, she stood right behind them. The clinic seemed to confuse her; she stayed closer to him there than anywhere else. Whether it was out of protectiveness or something else, Sherlock doesn't know. Maybe she had been afraid that they would succeed in severing their connection?

Eventually, he was discharged, because they decided that whatever ailed him didn't seem to make him want to do anything harmful to himself or others, and that it wasn't bothering him beyond the nightmares. That's what Sherlock told them: that he had realised it had all happened in his dreams. Lying was a small price to pay to be able to leave that place.

All through his childhood, he was lonely. Other children seemed to sense something was off about him, just like animals did when she was around. Cats hissed, dogs growled, birds stopped chirping.

He was lonely, even though he had a constant companion.

Now, he has a constant companion of another kind, one who is warm flesh and pumping blood; one who Sherlock has chosen. He has never wished more that she'd leave him the fuck alone, finally.

"She has to be family or a friend or a neighbour or something, if she's connected to you like this," John reasons. "I think we need to find out more about where you come from. If we find out her connection to you, we might find out who she is, and maybe we can then work out what she wants."

Sherlock rises from his seat and circles the table in a fit of courage; he leans in to kiss John because he had said ' _we_ ' and Sherlock has never been a part of anything like that with someone he loves.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

There's so much red tape. So many issues in trying to get old records unsealed, to obtain old police reports from archives. Everything takes such a long time, and the processing of applications gets stuck and delayed in the slow-rolling wheels of bureaucracy.

John is more optimistic than Sherlock is.

Sherlock doesn't want to tell him that a part of him fears that whatever they find won't be enough. That she will still stay.

Their relationship is on hold. There are hugs, kisses, small touches when John walks past him, but they don't share a bed. Sherlock is certain John would be able to perform even if she was hovering by, but for Sherlock this has become a matter of principle: she needs to go so that he can get on with his life, with the person he has chosen.

They sleep together, that's all. Just sleep, in John's room.

She doesn't go in there.

  
-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

"Holmes isn't that uncommon a surname, is it?" John asks over Sherlock's shoulder when he notices he's staring at something in the morning's Times.

There's a headline: _'Decorated_ _Ambassador Mycroft Holmes to return to native soil to take over post of Permanent Under-Secretary of Her Majesty's Diplomatic Services'_

"Mycroft," Sherlock whispers. "How could I forget such a name?"

The man in the photo is balding and has much lighter hair and less angular facial features than he has, and Sherlock would be lying if he claimed that he's a hundred percent certain. It's been such a long time, and he doesn't have any photographs of his brother, but this could well be him.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

He makes an appointment, using the name _Scott Baker_. A fake name will be a good test to see if this Mycroft Holmes would recognise him without the familiar reference of a name. And, if he doesn't, it'll spare both their blushes. He'll make up some excuse of wanting to see the man.

Mycroft Holmes has an impressive office, one that is still being refurbished after his predecessor had retired. The man himself stands up from behind his desk when Sherlock enters with John in tow, but he's still reading some document so doesn't raise his head to look at his guests just yet.

"What can I do for you, Mister Baker?" Mycroft Holmes asks, finally stretching his back straight and surveying the scene.

Then, his eyes go wide. "Oh, my Lord. _William?_ "

Judging by the article in the Times, and everything Sherlock had found out about the man by googling his name, Mycroft Holmes is not a man of openly expressed emotion. His underlings reportedly call him ' _The Ice Man_ '.

It takes some time for The Ice Man to regain his composure. Then, he calls his PA. "Clear my schedule for the rest of the day and ready my car."

For a moment, Sherlock fears he's about to flee.

"I assume you have questions?" Mycroft Holmes says, eyes fixed on Sherlock as though he's memorising every bit of him.

Sherlock nods.

"I assure you that those questions are best answered by travelling to where they all originated."

 

  
-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-

 

It takes them two hours to get to a small country road in southern Sussex. It leads to the ruins of a house.

They leave behind the warmth of the car and stand in a wind strong enough to whip around the bare skeletons of trees nearby.

"They told me it was best not to remind you about what happened," Mycroft says, leaning on his umbrella for fortitude. "Our uncle took me in, and they never told me where they sent you. First, they said you were in the hospital for some time, and couldn't remember anything about home, and that it was for the best that we stayed separated. They told me to forget about you, but it doesn't work like that for most people. I never forgot."

They are standing in tall grass, the house looming before them in the grey light of the cloudy day. Fashioned from stone, it must have had at least ten rooms spread over several floors. Now, it's a wind-beaten ruin, scorch marks on the walls visible even from a distance. It's obvious it has not been lived in for a long time or repaired after the fire that has devastated it.

"Musgrave Hall went to the bank after our parents died. There weren't any funds, because the insurance payments had been neglected. The ancestral home, lost," Mycroft says. His tone is hollow, and the words sound as though he has rehearsed them through the years, in preparation of this moment.

"Sherlock… You started the fire. It was an accident; Father had told you off many times, but you were curious, liked to play with matches and candles. You had snuck downstairs alone and I was on a school trip; everyone else was sleeping upstairs. There was no fire escape; it's an old house, and our parents never got around to acquiring such things for it. Mummy's remains were discovered in your and Eurus' room, Father's in the upstairs hallway. You were found in the garden, hiding. Uncle Rudy came to Cornwall to pick me up; I never came back here as a child. We lost everything; there was nothing to salvage."

"The photos I have––"

"Uncle Rudy had some; he delivered them to your social services case worker. I begged to see you, but it was agreed that I might have provided a harmful reminder of what had happened when you were trying to protect yourself by forgetting."

Mycroft lays his palms on Sherlock's shoulders, frowns as he studies his younger brother's features. "I never stopped looking for you, but the paper trail disappears at one point. There was a flood with major water damage in the Arun Borough Council records, and that's where I got stuck looking; you changed your first name, or they changed it for you? I can't believe it's finally you." He shakes his head.

"One foster family had seven other children. They already had a Will and a William, so they let me choose Scott or Sherlock."

That's his whole name, chopped to pieces. _William Sherlock Scott Holmes_. He had never identified with William or with Scott. Somehow, Sherlock fit, even though the circumstances under which he began to use it were not pleasant.' _Sherlock's a bit odd as names go',_ his foster father, the one he'd hated the most, had said. _'Then again, he's a bit of a strange kid_.'

Mycroft drops his hands and retreats to check a message on his phone.

John steps closer to Sherlock, placing his palm protectively on the small of his back. "There's a woman, a _girl_ , I mean––" he stammers. "You just mentioned a name––"

Mycroft looks up at her. "Eurus."

Sherlock wonders if he should tell his brother that she's still here, somehow. _Eurus_.

Mycroft lifts a palm to halt their promenade towards the house, as though he has suddenly remembered something. "The family plot! I remember the funeral; Uncle Rudy though it was macabre burying them here but the area is consecrated, and it was in their will. Come on," he prompts and starts making his way through towards a copse nearby.

In the middle of a secluded grove stands a set of gravestones. Sherlock brushes off dead leaves which have stacked thick to read the names. He has a copy of his birth certificate, so the names of his parents are familiar. There are eighteen other names on the stones, all Holmeses. This must be Father's side of the family, then, since their mother had been née Vernet.

One of the three more recent engravings reads ' _Eurus Violet Holmes_. _Born January 6th 1979. Joined our Lord in heaven on the 24th October 1983'._

Sherlock huffs. _No, she didn't_ , he thinks.

Then, he realises that they share a birthday.

They're _twins_.

 

-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-  
  
  


"At least it's Halloween; otherwise this would have raised some brows," John says three days later, placing a plastic shopping bag on the kitchen table. He has a dead leaf in his hair which Sherlock plucks out, unable to resist running his fingers through John's golden-grey mane in the process.

He then reads the name on the side of the bag. " _Hamley's_ , John?! We're trying to talk to my sister, not play a children's game. I told you to go to Treadwell's."

"Well, Treadwell's was closed for renovations, and Hamley's had one that was cheap but still made of wood. The thought counts, right?"

Sherlock peers into the bag and pulls out the Ouija board. "Ridiculous," he mutters. "If I thought this was going to work I would have done it years ago."

He should have tried it after Irene told her to. _I should have looked into these things._

After discovering who she is, there's a whole new layer of guilt in his life now over not acting sooner, over not turning every stone to find a means to communicate.

John rummages around the plastic bag some more, producing two small candlesticks and two black candles.

Sherlock's brows knit together.

John shrugs. "Seemed appropriate."

  
-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-0-o-  
  


  
The two men fortify themselves with large shots of whisky, clear the kitchen table, light the candles, and place the pointer also known as a _planchette_ on the Ouija board. The indicator arrow is pointing to an empty space between the words 'yes' and 'no'.

"Should we turn off the lights?" John asks.

"She's never required that before. Day or night, it seems to be all the same to her," Sherlock explains. "No need for theatrics."

It's dark outside, but the street lights outside dimly illuminate the flat. John turns off the kitchen ceiling lamp but leaves a table lamp on in the sitting room.

Sherlock is standing by the fireplace, the fingers of his right hand clasped around his left wrist, thumb rubbing circles into the sensitive spot over his median nerve.

The sound of the chair scraping the floor feels startlingly loud when John takes a seat by the table.

Sherlock makes no move to join him yet. He's heard, seen or felt no concrete sign of her presence today, but he has had a lingering sense of being watched with both curiosity and apprehension. After Musgrave Hall, he thinks he can sense her emotions more clearly, as though the visit had unlocked something in their connection.

"Come on," John prompts. "You've talked to her plenty of times before. Now, we might get an answer back."

"I've had answers, of sorts, before."

"You're stalling," John teases with a smile. "Where's my scientist, now? Might be a significant breakthrough, communicating with the dead."

"Don't make jokes about her, John."

Sherlock makes his way to the table, primly arranges himself into a chair next to John so that they can both look at the board from the right side.

"Why didn't you tell Mycroft she's still around?" John asks.

"And risk making my long-lost brother thinking I've lost it years ago? Not a very good second first impression."

John places the forefinger and the middle finger of his right hand on the planchette. "You googled some instructions, didn't you?"

"The websites were largely unhelpful." Sherlock places a forefinger next to John's. ' _Never ask when you're going to die, never taunt a spirit, don't take what they say as the truth, never use the board alone, do not ask joke questions, open and close the session properly and never leave the planchette on the board even for a bathroom break'_. There was also a suggestion that it's a bad idea to use it at one's home, but if we're contacting someone who spends a lot of time here, anyway, then what's the harm?"

"You know, even after everything, a part of me still wants to dismiss it all as some, I don't know…"

"Hallucination? Psychosis? Figment of my imagination? Folie á deux? Once, I would have given my left foot for any of those to be true, but after thirty years with her I know it's pointless. She's here, John. Always has been. Science may not be able to explain how, but it does not change the fact of her existence. We need to find out whether it is love, vengeance, or something else that has helped her—or forced her—to defeat death."

John squares his shoulders. "You should be the one to ask the questions."

They shift the planchette to the opening symbol, and Sherlock makes note of how it feels to move the wooden object around consciously. He has read plenty of articles debunking the whole thing, and the theories behind how humans can subconsciously plant messages when playing with the board seem sound. Still, this is the only thing he hasn't tried, and Irene seemed to think it would work.

And, even if this works, who's to say she will even _want_ to cooperate? Sherlock has tried leaving around writing materials, tried to write questions in the steam of the bathroom mirror, has talked and screamed and begged—yet nothing.

One theory connected to the Ouija board is that even if a spirit had not known how to read or write when they were still alive, the board can still work because the answers are channelled through the participants of the séance.

Sherlock clears his throat. "I want to speak with Eurus. Are you here?"

Nothing. The planchette does not move, and everything stays as it had been.

Already feeling rather stupid, Sherlock tries again. "This is Sherlock, asking for Eurus."

"Does she know you by that name?" John asks.

"Excellent point. She should, but maybe she'd prefer the name she must have known me by. This is _William_ , wanting to speak with Eurus."

A breeze, gentle as an exhalation, flickers the candles and raises the hairs on Sherlock's arms; he is wearing a dress shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

The moment passes, and Sherlock begins to believe it had just been a normal draught, not a presence.

John is wearing one of his ubiquitous jumpers one, the oatmeal one the sleeves of which have been stretched out of shape. Sherlock mocks it to hide how much he likes seeing John in such garments.

Suddenly, his train of thought is derailed by the planchette shifting. First, it's slow, tentative. Then, faster.

WILL, it spells out.

"Eurus?"

The planchette slides to _YES_.

"John is here with me. Is that alright? You know he lives here."

Hesitation. Then, the planchette slides backwards before settling back on _YES_.

"I'm sorry it's taken so long to talk. To find you, so to speak." He's speaking fast, almost frantically.

No answer. _I guess an apology is not what she's after_.

"Can you tell me why you're here?"

FIRE

_Is she being cheeky?_

"Yes, I know about that. I know that's how you–––" _Is it insensitive to talk to someone about the manner of their death?_

ALONE

Sherlock is suddenly cold again, much colder than before. It's as though someone had opened a window on a winter day. The only warmth he feels is just above his lip––

Suddenly, John lifts his fingers off the planchette, rises from the chair and grabs a bit of kitchen tissue, pressing it underneath Sherlock's nose.

It comes out crimson.

Nosebleed, but only a trickle. Sherlock has read about the possibility of this happening when using the board. It's when the communicating spirit is angry or conflicted.

Sherlock doesn't want to let go of the board, so he lets John tip his head back, dab at his nose in a pointless manner, then, once he's satisfied it has stopped, he sits back down, stealing a worried glance at Sherlock before replacing his fingers on the pointer.

"You hurt him, and this stops. Are we _clear?_ " John asks the pointer.

"You're not supposed to give her orders," Sherlock hisses. "All the websites said that it's dangerous."

"I don't care," John says sternly. "Eurus, or whoever the hell you are, you behave yourself, or I'll find someone much less sympathetic to sort you out. Understood?"

_YES_

NOT HURT WILL, the planchette writes.

"Good," John retorts.

Sherlock tries to silence him with a glance. "She's never deliberately hurt me, John. I get the sense that she can't quite grasp why certain things scare people."

"So you think she's a ghost who doesn't deliberately scare people?" John shakes his head. "Isn't that their bloody job description?"

There's a question which had occurred to Sherlock as he stood on the field, watching the sun set behind Musgrave Hall. Eurus had been four when she'd died. It would explain why she may not be able to recognise letters except through him and John on the board, why she can't write, and why visual manifestations of her as older children or adults do not have distinctive features. They're just conjecture, academic guesswork from her. She doesn't know how to be an adult, because she never _was_ one. She doesn't understand how to behave so that she wouldn't scare him, because she has the reasoning of a four-year-old.

"How old are you?" Sherlock asks.

The planchette slides to the letter four. Then, it spells: TIMES THIRTY

She doesn't age. She can only _imagine_ herself as older.

The coldness seems to abate. He has always associated it with something that disturbs or upsets her. _She's been alone for thirty years, just like me, because even when together, we're separated by something neither of us understands._

"Sometimes I think that's Sherlock's emotional age, too," John jokes.

The planchette flies into action.

WILL _,_ it insists. Twice.

"I've always known him as Sherlock," John explains apologetically.

"Sherlock is my second first name," Sherlock reminds his sister. "I had to use it because there were two Williams where I lived."

NOT HOME

"No, that wasn't home. I couldn't go home, just like you couldn't go back there. I don't really even remember home—not even now that I've been there with Mycroft. And, I didn't remember you; I didn't realise it was you all along. I forgot, because it was easier that way. That's what the doctors thought—that when something bad happens, you tell yourself a nicer story to cope."

This is how Mycroft had explained it to him. Clearly, his older brother is very clever, possibly as clever as he is; Mycroft had read up on memory to see if a sort of a self-inflicted traumatic amnesia was possible. The answer was yes. Carbon monoxide poisoning, traumatic head injury, loss of parents and a home could lead to traumatic dissociation and amnesia, especially in someone whose brain works differently from the average person.

"Why did you stay, and not go…wherever it is someone goes when they…die?" Sherlock asks.

WILL STAYS

"I didn't choose to stay; I didn't choose anything. You can't stay because of me, you shouldn't have! I need to _live_ , you know, and some of it I can't do if you're constantly there! I need to do… grown-up things. Things you shouldn't be privy to even if you _were_ my sister _and_ an adult _and_ alive!"

He hadn't meant to be so blunt about it.

WILL ALONE

"Did you stay because you thought I'd be alone?"

_YES_

How the hell does he address this without hurting her? "That's–– that's–– I'm grateful, and it's a nice thing to do, but because you stay, it makes it hard for other people to be with me. To make me feel less alone."

NOT MISS ME?

Sherlock feels as though all the breath has been knocked from his lungs. "I'd miss you if you were properly gone, but now you're sort of… in-between. I would have missed you if I'd known I'd lost you, but all I had was… this. And I didn't understand it. I didn't understand why you were here."

There's one thing that worries him. All the instructions had said that ghosts can lie just as people do. Is she being honest about her motives? "Are you angry with me?" he asks. "About the fire?"

WHY

"Because I started it. I didn't mean to, but it happened, and that's why things are the way they are."

Silence.

"I was foolish, I was careless, and you and Mummy and Father died, but I was four years old, too."

There it is. The truth. Explained so that even a child could understand.

WILL NOT MEAN IT

ACCIDENT

Sherlock looks away. It's hard to pick apart his emotions; he remembers so little, if anything, about the events of those days, but speaking about them with Mycroft seems to have awakened some echoes of emotions he can't connect to memories. Of guilt. Or regret. Of loss. Of not understanding why he was being kept away from Mummy and Father.

"Eurus?"

NOT ANGRY

He leans his elbow on the table, fingers perched on his upper lip. He can tell from the corner of his eye that John is watching him carefully.

The guilt is what he most lacks a roadmap for. He had been just a child, but the consequences of his actions cannot be dismissed lightly. Three people are dead, a home lost, a family destroyed.

ACCIDENT, Eurus reminds him as though she'd known what he is thinking.

Hasn't he been punished enough? Thirty years of literally being _haunted_?

"He's not alone. I promise to look after him, alright?" John tells Eurus.

I HAVE TO GO?

"You _can_ go," Sherlock replies, but his voice breaks halfway through. For a long time, he would have wished her to the tenth circle of hell so that he could be left alone but now, he realises the permanence of her potential departure. Though her presence has been a frightening nuisance, she has been a kind of a constant in his life. Maybe, on occasion, her presence has even been somewhat reassuring; with her, he at least knows what to expect, unlike with living people.

John's arm curls around his waist, tugging him closer. "It's alright," he murmurs into Sherlock's ear. "It's time."

It's time, _of course it's time_ , but it's hard to let go of things because it feels as though that's all Sherlock has ever done. Lived a life of letting go. Lived a life of constantly downgrading his expectations.

Until John walked into it.

JOHN STAYS

"Yeah," John confirms. "I will." He leans his forehead against Sherlock's ear before shifting away. His bad shoulder must have been complaining about the position.

I GO

"Where are you going to––– are Mummy and Father–––" Sherlock starts but then has to stop because he's suddenly overwhelmed by the realisation that this _is_ it. This might be the conversation he's been trying to have for thirty years.

NOT ALLOWED TO SAY

"If you go, can I still talk to you like this?"

MAYBE

_Maybe is enough. Maybe is not a no._

Suddenly, Sherlock doesn't want to let her go. He should have talked to her more, should have done this earlier. They're both lived blind and deaf and mute to each other, and now it's over.

IT'S OKAY WILL

"Sherlock?" John calls out quietly and nods towards the sitting room.

Sherlock blinks, confused, but when he turns to look, he understands.

She's there.

She's four years old, and she's sitting in Sherlock's usual chair. Pigtails, worn floral skirt, blue cardigan. He's never seen her this clearly.

She waves. Waves, like someone waving from the window of a departing train. Like someone turning to look back when walking away. Like someone saying goodbye.

The planchette moves towards the symbol denoting the end of the session.

"No," Sherlock whispers. "I didn't know you. Not really. I just tolerated you and it's not the same."

YOU STAY

"I have to," Sherlock breathes out. "I want to." A tear escapes, meanders down his cheek, and he makes no attempt to stop it.

He forgot. He never mourned her. It was too painful. Has his suspended sorrow tethered her to this plane?

All the more reason to let go.

Sherlock watches the planchette move to end the session. When he whips his head around to look at the sofa, she's gone.

Without a word, John packs away the board. Sherlock lets him enclose his hand in his own and lead him to the bedroom upstairs. They lie down in the dark together, face to face. The sensation of being there just with John is strange. The world feels less predictable, now, but also less confusing.

The world also feels less alone because the secret of her is no longer there to separate Sherlock from John. Under her reign, Sherlock had allowed his isolation to grow like cancer, held onto it because it was the only kind of life he knew.

Now, there are other things onto which he can hold.

One day, he'll follow her. But, before that, he has things to do.

New bonds to create. After being so closely allied to someone, it's something he should be good at. Commitment.

And, if Sherlock needs any pointers, John will be there. Until the end of his days.  
  


**——— The End ———**

**Author's Note:**

>  _My sister and I, you will recollect, were twins, and you know how subtle are the links which bind two souls which are so closely allied._  
>  —Arthur Conan Doyle
> 
> [Treadwell's](https://www.treadwells-london.com) is a London institution—one of the city's most prestigious bookshops specialising in magic, esotericism, and the occult.


End file.
